WHAT WE LIKED:

WHAT WE DISLIKED:

Introduction

The power requirements of enthusiast and gaming PCs have increased dramatically over the last few years, due to the development of ever more powerful and sophisticated CPUs and graphics processors. More power can often mean higher energy bills, and manufacturers have been working on improving power efficiency for their products in response.

While the general trend has been higher energy consumption, there are many consumers that don’t need a high end kilowatt power supply. There is still a considerable market for mid-range units to power a single graphics card setup, something under 600W.

The Cougar PowerX 550W is one such mid-range power supply, and while this unit isn’t a beast like some we’ve seen of late, the PowerX is 80PLUS Bronze certified and comes with a price of only $70. Seems pretty affordable, so let’s take a closer look at this Cougar unit and see how it fares.